Wondered how to reduce animal cruelty in your everyday life: here’s some simple pointers…

1) Buy Cruelty Free

Many household items are tested on animals. Animals die painfully every day through cruel animal tests for chemicals, household cleaning products, cosmetics and more.
Luckily, there are a many household products on the market found in most supermarkets that are free from animal testing. Animal Test-Free products are easily identifiable

* and are often more friendly on the environment (due to ethically conscious producers). Read the fine print and buy cruelty free!

*Products that ARE tested on animals will not indicate so on the packaging. Refer to our list, rely on confirmation of animal test-free product packaging, or contact the manufacturer..

2) Don’t buy from Pet Stores

The overpopulation crisis of unwanted pets means that every day, innocent domestic animals are discarded and must be euthanased at animal shelters that are filled to capacity.

Animals kept in pet stores often live in confined spaces and suffer fear and boredom from lack of physical and mental stimulus.

Adopt a companion animal from an animal refuge, gain a loving friend and save a life! See Say No To Animals In Pet Shops for more information.

3) Don’t visit Animal Circuses!

Behind the costumes and dazzling lights, animals used in entertainment often live their lives in cramped, alien environments, and suffer abuse through violent training and disciplinary techniques.

Wild animals are at home ONLY in the wild. Many cities throughout the world have banned animal circuses, while the best circuses in the world rely solely on human talent such as Cirque du Soleil.

Visit www.circuses.com for more information.

4) Be fashionable without cruelty

Each year fashion changes, some years rabbit fur or leather might be ‘in’. Fur and leather are integral to the profitability of the factory farming industry, possibly the biggest perpetrators of cruelty in the world. Farmed fur animals are confined to small cages all their lives and then anally electrocuted. Leather for shoes, handbags etc, is the leftovers of meat production. You don’t have to condone suffering to be stylish! Many non-animal options now exist.
Visit Vegan Wares and Roots of Compassion

5) Teach kids kindness to animals

Too often children grow up without having learnt that animals have feelings and suffer just like us. Teaching your kids to be kind to animals at a young age will help them develop compassion towards human beings too in later life. Encourage your child’s school to teach about both sides of the animals story - animals are more than just food - and challenge the perception that the rest of life on earth is there for our use.
Visit Compassionate Kidz and Share the World (teachers kits)
The QLD RSPCA also offer guest speakers on Humane Education for your school

6) Object to dissection at school

If you’re a high school or university student you need to know that you don’t have to dissect animals to pass. You have a right to conscientiously object to anything you are morally opposed to and the teacher must provide learning alternatives.
Contact the Human Education representative of Animals Australia for help
Read “An Interview with Andrew Knight” - a vet student who fought Murdoch University to be compassionate.

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